craftycultivator

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Crocus Seed (Crocus vernus)

Did you know that crocus can send up little seed heads after the foliage has died back? because I didn’t until this spring. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen in previous years, but nearly every clump of crocus has done it this year. Whether I left it in the ground, or dug it up to move it. So what am I going to do? I opened up the seed pods of course and sprinkled them into a pot of…

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Quick Update of June (2024)

I wanted to pop in with a quick mostly photo update of what has been happening around here in June (while it is still June). Everything is still in pots while we are working out some details. We have also been under water restrictions with ZERO outdoor water use allowed because of the water main break in Calgary. Luckily it has actually been raining this year, so everything has been kept ticking…

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Strawberries from Seed

Since the garden is in a state of instability this year, I didn’t start anything from seed. No tomatoes, no herbs… Nothing. In May, at the height of not knowing where we were going to end up, I stress started ALL the strawberry seeds I had in my seed stash. I figured that at least I would have some baby plants to tend, and I could plant them out at my Dads in the summer if I needed to. I had 3…

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Columbine (Aquilega)

Columbine is one of my favorite super-low maintenance plants. They easily self seed, but are also perennial. They are at home in a shady woodland type setting, but can handle a wide range of sun/shade conditions. The majority of my Columbine plants are from the ones I grew from seed over 10 years ago. They are mostly yellow (not my favorite) and a red/yellow mix ones. I wouldn’t go out of my way…

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Rhubarb

‘Strawberry Red’ Rhubarb after harvest this spring (and Hali (cat) photo bomb Rhubarb is ones of those classic homestead plants. It is one of the things I use to gauge whether Spring is actually happening or if we are in for another round of cold and/or snow. It hardly ever lets me down. Even though it can handle the cold and snow just fine if it starts growing, it seems to hold off a bit in the…

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Veronica & Salvia

‘Blue Bomb’ Veronica in 2022 As I have stated in a few of my more recent posts, my garden situation is a little unstable at the moment. So my plan is to dig up my favorite perennials that I have collected over the last 13 years, and move them to my dads house until I have some stability again. Some of them are also quite established so dividing them will be helpful for their overall and…

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Golden Currant (Ribes aureum)

Along with Lilacs, Golden Currant is one of my favorite plants of Spring. The clove scent of the flowers is wonderful and I can’t wait for my plant to get large and produce even more flowers. It can also be found under other common names like Clove Currant, Buffalo Currant and pruterberry (I haven’t heard that last one, but it was listed on Wikipedia, so I also included it here… if you know where…

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'Yellow Wonder' Strawberries

If you don’t want to fight the birds and squirrels for your strawberries and also want some well behaved plants that don’t send out runners like crazy, then these are the strawberries for you. I grew my 5 clumps from seed around 201 8. They grew slow, as strawberries tend to do, but haven’t skipped a beat since then. The first few years, I didn’t get many berries, but since around 2022, I’ve…

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'White Carolina' Strawberries (Spring 2024)

One afternoon in March, I had to run to Home Depot to quickly grab something, and they “convinced” me that I needed more strawberries in my life… The brand new untouched crate of strawberries and asparagus crowns was right there at the front door. While it may seem like it was expert merchandizing, I think it had just been unloaded and that was the only cool (temperature-wise) space they had…

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Moving Delphiniums

I want to attempt to keep these delphiniums forever. They were one of the very first things I planted at our home here, and I want to keep them for our forever home. They are such a deep and beautiful blue, and just bring me so much joy. I have no idea what cultivar they are, but they are one of my favorites. The photo above is a short flower spike, after cutting back the whole plant as a battle…

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Blue Cream Berries Tomato

This post has been languishing in my draft folder since 2020, so I’m posting it now with minimal edits while I wait for the gardening season to start around here. I dug through my camera roll on my phone and only had one singular photo of these tomatoes. This one is a newer tomato. It doesn’t have a history dating back to the turn of the last century. It was developed by Brad Gates of Wild Boar…

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Moving my 'Cora Louise' Itoh Peony

The best time to move peonies is in the fall. Since this is Alberta, we can quickly run out of “fall”. At the time of moving this peony, snow was imminent and could happen any time. Just a quick note here, that you can move peonies any time of the year, but in the fall, once they have finished blooming is the best time, as this will likely not set it back too far for blooms the following…

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Zebrune Shallots

This post has been sitting in my draft folder since 2020, so I figured it was time to put some polish on it and get it posted once and for all. Luckily I found 2 photos still in my camera roll from 2020 so this post actually gets a tiny bit of visual interest. I first saw these on Allotment Diary on YouTube, many many years ago and it took me until the winter of 2019 before I finally found seeds…

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2024

It’s been almost 2 years since I posted anything here. I’ve been busy… I grew a whole human and we couldn’t be more excited about how much change that has brought to our life. So I decided to finally take this blog more seriously and it is now “thecraftycultivator.com” instead of a free wordpress blog. In the next few days and weeks, I will be changing up the whole page set up here. Something I…

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Zucchini and Squash I'm Growing in 2022

Zucchini and Squash I’m Growing in 2022

I have successfully been far to distracted with what is going on behind the scenes here to start any tomatoes from seed. Rare for me, since my brain starts dreaming of all the tomatoes I’ll grow in the summer in the depths of winter in January. Instead, I wanted to grow more zucchini this year, since they are a little more self-sufficient than tomatoes. They are also one of my favourite…

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Beans for 2022

I figured I would keep writing about the other seeds I have sown this year, so this time, its Beans. I did 4 types of climbing/Pole/Runner Beans, and 2 types (so far anyway) of Bush Beans. If you read my last post about zucchini and squash. I was pretty long winded about my squirrel and slug battle plan, so rather than rehash it out in this post too, I’m just going to link back to the zucchini…

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May 2022

This post is going to pretty photo heavy at the end. I’ll try to add captions to the photos to say what they are, but there are so many beautiful things that it is easier to just let the photos speak for themselves. What I’ve seeded: 3 different types of Zucchini/SquashPole/Climbing and Bush BeansPurple Podded Peas (I might have actually sowed these in the end of April, but I don’t really…